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Developer Contests

We’re just launching our first WHERE Developer Contest (cash, intros to VCs, and more!) and it’s given me a chance to survey the diversity of ways that developer programs are promoting themselves.

Some contests like NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas involve pretty substantial cash prizes. Others, like Skype and Adobe, give away travel to destinations ranging from Prague to a ‘trip of a lifetime’. Then there are sites like MashupAwards and TopCoder who are focused purely on running contests. There are enough of them that ProgrammableWeb has recently added a directory of contests.

The need for these developer contests reflects the number of developer APIs out there, which is in turn a reflection of the huge number of web 2.0 companies. Brings back a little nostalgia for the early days when the only kind of mashup was something illegally hacked.